Total quality maintenance : An approach for continuous reduction in costs of quality products

The common thread in achieving and maintaining high Overall Equipment Effectiveness, OEE, is the availability of improved manufacturing processes capable of producing quality products without interruption. Implementing Just In Time, JIT, philosophy demands healthy processes. Any interruption of the line caused by any equipment malfunction or failure will result in a major disruption of output or even line or factory shutdown. Thus, an effective maintenance program should be evolved to provide the required availability of machinery and output quality. A new concept of condition-based maintenance, Total Quality Maintenance, TQMain, is presented. It aims to maintain not only machinery but all the elements constituting a manufacturing process, e.g. production/operation, environmental condition, personnel, methods, material, quality control. TQMain is a result of establishing a common database through integrating the maintenance program with other plant programs to form an overall plant Information Technology, IT-system. Identifying and ‘eliminating’ quality deviations and failure causes at early stages, and extensive use of data feedback are the suggested tools to accomplish continuous improvements and to assure high quality products